RESEARCH AREA:09 Health Disparities, Building trust between researchers and communities through capacity building in Environmental Public Health. : 09-ES-101* Increasing Capacity and Public Trust: A Strategy to Build Effective Sustainable Community- Academic Partnerships through Mentoring, Education, Training and Workforce Development NIH identified five gateway areas to increasing public trust in clinical research: building trust through community partnerships;building relationships with patients;building partnerships with community providers;building trust in scientists;and building trust in NIH and scientific research. The development of a formal, replicable strategy to rapidly and effectively increase the capacity of local community based organizations to partner with academic institutions and fully engage in biomedical as well as behavioral research has the potential to impact science and health in both direct and indirect ways and increase public trust in the research enterprise. NIEHS, was the first branch of NIH to recognize the importance of sponsoring academic- community partnerships as part of the trust building process. West Harlem Environmental Action, WE ACT, a community-based environmental justice organization was among the first recipients of NIEHS collaborative support. Through its almost two decade long history of interaction with researchers and community organizations both on a local and national level, WE ACT has developed the capacity to serve as a mentor to other community-based organizations. The proposed project will provide Good Old Lower East Side, GOLES, a community- based housing and economic justice organization, seeking to expand its mission to include environmental justice and public health and establish a community-academic partnership with the NYUSOM, Department of Medicine, with a two-year period of intensive mentoring from WE ACT. This will ensure rapid trust and capacity building in environmental public health and establish a sustainable community-academic partnership between the two community groups and NYU. Study Title: Increasing Capacity and Public Trust: A Strategy to Build Effective Sustainable Community-Academic Partnerships through Mentoring, Education, Training and Workforce Development Project Narrative: This application addresses Health Disparities, Building trust between researchers and communities through capacity building in Environmental Public Health. : 09-ES-101*. The project is entitled: Increasing Capacity and Public Trust: A Strategy to Build Effective Sustainable Community-Academic Partnerships through Mentoring, Education, Training and Workforce Development. NIEHS has been sponsoring and developing community-academic partnerships from the ground up, on a nationwide level since 1993. The proposed project seeks to develop a strategy to build sustainable community-academic partnerships through mentoring, education, training and workforce development. This would enable NIEHS to more rapidly and effectively create new partnerships and new jobs, provide environmental public health (EPH) training for local community residents, increase public t rust in behavioral and biomedical research, and improve community health.